The truth sometimes hurts; that is why the Palestinian Authority has been working hard to prevent the outside world from hearing about many occurrences that reflect negatively on its leaders or people.

In recent years, the Palestinian Authority leadership, often with the help of the mainstream media in the US and EU, has been successful in its effort to divert all attention only toward Israel.

Following are examples of some of the inconvenient truths that the Palestinian leadership in the West Bank do not want others to know about:

- Over 100 senior PLO and Fatah officials hold Israeli-issued VIP cards that grant them various privileges denied to most Palestinians. Among these privileges is the freedom to enter Israel and travel abroad at any time they wish. This privileging has existed since the signing of the Oslo Accords between Israel and the PLO in 1993.

- Out of the 600 Christians from the Gaza Strip who arrived in the West Bank in the past two weeks to celebrate Christmas, dozens have asked to move to Israel because they no longer feel comfortable living under the Palestinian Authority and Hamas.

- Dozens of Christian families from east Jerusalem have moved to Jewish neighborhoods in the the city because they too no longer feel comfortable living among Muslims.

- Palestinian Authority security forces in the West Bank continue to summon and arrest political opponents, journalists and bloggers who dare to criticize the Palestinian leadership.

THIRTY-TWO years ago, when I was 17 and living in Bombay, I was gang raped and nearly killed. Three years later, outraged at the silence and misconceptions around rape, I wrote a fiery essay under my own name describing my experience for an Indian women's magazine. It created a stir in the women's movement — and in my family — and then it quietly disappeared. Then, last week, I looked at my e-mail and there it was. As part of the outpouring of public rage after a young woman's rape and death in Delhi, somebody posted the article online and it went viral. Since then, I have received a deluge of messages from people expressing their support.

...

It's not exactly pleasant to be a symbol of rape. I'm not an expert, nor do I represent all victims of rape. All I can offer is that — unlike the young woman who died in December two weeks after being brutally gang raped, and so many others — my story didn't end, and I can continue to tell it.

Measles is responsible for thousands of tragic (and preventable) deaths each year. Which is perhaps why so many reviewers are panning a new (and apparently self-published) book by Stephanie Messenger, an Australian author and anti-vaccine activist. According to the author's page, 'Melanie's Marvelous Measles' was written to:

Educate children on the benefits of having measles and how you can heal from them naturally and successfully. Often today, we are being bombarded with messages from vested interests to fear all diseases in order for someone to sell some potion or vaccine, when, in fact, history shows that in industrialized countries, these diseases are quite benign and, according to natural health sources, beneficial to the body. Having raised three children vaccine-free and childhood disease-free, I have experienced many times when my children's vaccinated peers succumb to the childhood diseases they were vaccinated against.

Amazon reviewers have not taken kindly to Messenger's suggestion that measles can be an 'adventure,' either.

Animal advocates, and animals in labs, were given yet another reason to celebrate the new year with the enactment of a law in Israel banning animal testing for cosmetics, personal care and household products that went into effect at midnight on December 31.

'Animal testing in the Cosmetics Industry inflicts horrific suffering on these animals. Each product requires between 2,000-3,000 tests, and animals die in agony,' said MK Eitan Cabel, who called the move a 'true revolution in animal welfare.'

Animal testing for cosmetics and other products was banned in Israel in 2007, but this new ban is focused on products that are imported from other countries and will also mean an end to marketing products that have been tested on animals, even if the testing was done elsewhere in the world.

At the new ice cream parlor in Tarshiha, the common language is the sound of a lick. With a mixed clientele of Muslims, Christians and Jews from Israel and abroad, visitors will hear Hebrew, Arabic, English and a smattering of other languages being spoken between licks.

Adam Ziv and Alaa Sawitat opened Bouza ('ice cream' in Arabic) last July and have attracted a steady stream of clientele curious about this partnership between an Arab Muslim and a Jewish kibbutznik in the Tarshiha shuk (marketplace), which is not usually associated with swanky ice cream stores. What also helps business is that the nearest homemade ice cream shop in the Western Galilee is 16 kilometers away.

But it's the taste that brings customers back, says Ziv.

'We're not just a novelty of being a Muslim-Jewish coexistence ice cream store,' Ziv tells ISRAEL21c. 'We make ice cream that people like.'

Bouza's customers range from schoolchildren (who pay the equivalent of just $1.25 if they come in school uniform) to grandparents. Ice cream is served by portion size and not by the scoop, with prices ranging between $2.35 and $4.50.

"It's a disaster," female Egyptian lawyer Nihad Abu El Konsam told German media. "There isn't a single article in the draft constitution that mentions the rights of women."

"This constitution will set Egypt 100 years back," added Abu El Konsam, noting that the Muslim Brotherhood had purposely left "open doors" that will result in Egyptians being placed under an extremist form of Islamic rule.

Hamdeen Sabahi, an opposition leader who placed third in Egypt's presidential election, said the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamists have "stolen" Egypt's pro-democracy revolution, but he remains hopeful that they can be toppled.

The Kassam missile landed in an open area in the Gaza Strip, causing no injuries or damage, the IDF Spokesman's Office said.

The rocket fire is a breach of the Egyptian-mediated ceasefire signed by Hamas on November 21 ending Israel's Operation Pillar of Defense. As part of the deal, Hamas agreed to halt its own fire and rein in other terror groups.

Also on Sunday, IDF soldiers arrested two unarmed Palestinians who crossed the Gaza border fence.

In Saturday television interviews, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the Israeli army is preparing to deal Hamas 'a heavier blow' than it sustained in last month's eight-day military offensive, Operation Pillar of Fire.

Levy regularly demonizes the Jewish state to foreign audiences and in his own newspaper columns. He regularly goes beyond legitimate criticism of Israel, crossing red lines and allying himself with those who refer to Israel as a racist 'apartheid state', promote boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) and wish to see the very destruction of Israel.

On the basis that Levy promotes the canard of Israeli 'apartheid', he is the last journalist who could give an objective analysis of this polls results.

His article opened with the following premise:

Most of the Jewish public in Israel supports the establishment of an apartheid regime in Israel if it formally annexes the West Bank.

Levy's entire premise was based, however, on a hypothetical situation where Israel annexes the West Bank – a policy that the majority of Israelis are opposed to according to the very same poll.

Other statistics were casually tossed into the mix by Levy in an attempt to fit the figures to his framing of Israel as an apartheid state. Minority opinions were highlighted and illustrative graphs that appeared in the Haaretz Hebrew edition were noticeably absent from the English article.

Levy stated that the survey was commissioned by the New Israel Fund's Yisraela Goldblum Fund. It was perhaps an indicator of just how politicized and toxic this poll was that the New Israel Fund publicly disassociated itself (Hebrew) from it.

...

For his slander against the State of Israel and his persistent promotion of the falsehood even after he had been found out, HonestReporting readers judged Gideon Levy a worthy winner of the 2012 Dishonest Reporter Award.

As Bay Area high school students, we encounter people who hold many preconceived notions of Israel. Some of our teachers openly condemn Israel for being an apartheid state and engaging in other monstrosities; fellow students speak of Israelis as murderers; and many peers refuse even to acknowledge Israel's legitimacy as a state.

Therefore, my WOFI team chose to make our documentary about Israel's public image and about how it is being demonized by falsified media in "Pallywood," a widespread effort to present the Palestinians as hapless victims of Israeli aggression. While filming, we met people who gave us a great deal of insight into the topic and opened our minds to the dangers.

Today, most people trust the media to always tell the truth, even when it lies. Anti-Israel forces use the international media as a powerful channel to spread disinformation. By exposing the lies of Pallywood we want to put a spotlight on their malicious efforts. Our goal is to reveal the damage that's been done to Israel's image by Pallywood and show Israel in a brighter light--because we feel that we must do our part to protect the only real democracy in the Middle East.

For the first time since 2006, more West Bank Palestinians support the political approach of Hamas as opposed to that of Fatah and its leader, Mahmoud Abbas, a new poll shows. And an overwhelming majority of Palestinians believe the results of the latest Hamas-Israel escalation that included Operation Pillar of Defense — Israel's eight-day operation against terror targets in Gaza last month — prove that the armed struggle represents the best path to Palestinian independence.

The poll, conducted earlier this month by the Arab World Research and Development (AWRAD), a Ramallah-based research center, sampled 1,200 Palestinians from both Gaza and the West Bank. It set out to examine political opinions among Palestinians following Operation Pillar of Defense in Gaza and Mahmoud Abbas's successful UN nonmember statehood bid.

While both events are overwhelmingly viewed as positive by Palestinians, adding popularity to both Palestinian factions, 42% of West Bank respondents said they preferred the approach of Hamas to that of Fatah, as opposed to only 28% who preferred Fatah's approach.

_However_

Interestingly, more Gazans, 40%, said they preferred Fatah's approach to that of Hamas, which rules over them. Thirty-seven percent of Gazans said Hamas's approach was better.

Granted, only 1200 were polled so who knows if this is indicative of anything significant. Thoughts?

Details of banning Coptic Christians from voting are not immediately available, but earlier the opposition National Salvation Front was quoted by AFP as saying that a judge in Nasr City forbade Christians from casting their vote.

On November 30, the draft constitution was passed by an assembly composed mostly of Islamists, in a marathon session, despite a walkout by secular activists and Christians from the 100-member panel.

If the constitution is approved by a simple majority of voters, the Islamists who gripped powered after Mubarak's ouster would gain even more clout in the country. The current upper house of parliament, which is dominated by the Islamists, will be given legislative authority until a new parliament is elected.

...

Mursi's opponents, however, say minority concerns have been ignored and the charter is full of obscurely worded clauses that could allow the ruling Islamists to restrict civil liberties, ignore women's rights and undermine labor unions.

'At one point in our history, Cleopatra, a woman, ruled Egypt. Now you have a constitution that makes women not even second-class but third-class citizens,' this is that Olivia Ghita a prominent businesswoman declared. Adding, 'This constitution is tailored for one specific group (the Muslim Brotherhood). It's a shame. I am very upset.'

Gun massacres have happened many times in many countries, and in every other country, gun laws have been tightened to reflect the tragedy and the tragic knowledge of its citizens afterward. In every other country, gun massacres have subsequently become rare. In America alone, gun massacres, most often of children, happen with hideous regularity, and they happen with hideous regularity because guns are hideously and regularly available.The people who fight and lobby and legislate to make guns regularly available are complicit in the murder of those children. They have made a clear moral choice: that the comfort and emotional reassurance they take from the possession of guns, placed in the balance even against the routine murder of innocent children, is of supreme value. Whatever satisfaction gun owners take from their guns—we know for certain that there is no prudential value in them—is more important than children's lives. Give them credit: life is making moral choices, and that's a moral choice, clearly made.

There is a branch of anti-choice activists that will use pretty much anything as a medium for their message: newspaper ads, graphic signs displayed in front of schools, bus stop benches. You would think they would know well enough to leave one place untouched, though. Wire coat hangers.

A two-year old Palestinian boy from the Judea and Samaria region underwent a bone marrow transplant last month at Israel's Chaim Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer. The procedure was funded by the Civil Administration, after the Palestinian Authority declined the family's request to fund it.

'This procedure will save the child's life,' explained Dalia Bessa, the Health Coordinator for the Civil Administration. 'When this sort of procedure is needed and the Palestinian Authority refuses to fund it, the Civil Administration steps in, in order to save lives.'

Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal, in a defiant speech during his first ever visit to Gaza, told a mass rally on Saturday he would never recognize Israel and pledged to "free the land of Palestine inch by inch".

...

"Palestine is ours from the river to the sea and from the south to the north. There will be no concession on an inch of the land," he told the crowds, saying he wanted the Palestinians to have all the territory that makes up modern-day Israel.

"We will never recognize the legitimacy of the Israeli occupation and therefore there is no legitimacy for Israel, no matter how long it will take," he said.

"From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free." Code for "Kill the Jews." We, those of us who stand for Israel's right to exist in the San Francisco Bay Area, hear this every time the haters show up to bash Jews and Israel. The Palestinians voted Hamas into power and it is this reality that must be addressed by them if they are to ever be accepted as a legitimate, independent nation.

Maariv 30.11.2012 features a photo of HIla, the 28 year old head of the testing division responsible for the testing and transfer of Iron Dome batteries to the Air Force who is in her 9th month of pregnancy (expecting to give birth next Sunday). The battery was completing a series of testing at the testing field when Israel assassinated Ahmed Jabri. The team realized that they could close the gap between testing and deployment and in the course of 60 hours were able to deploy the Iron Dome battery to defend Tel Aviv. Hila is an aeronautical engineer married to an Air Force officer.

When her husband’s commander told him he was sending him home to be with his wife as she was about to give birth, he replied that his wife wasn’t home. [Maariv reporter Achikam Moshe David]

Though not a huge fan of organized religion in general, I still support progressive ideas and reform within Orthodox communities, as I [personally] think it's better for such organizations to be more inclusive, than exclusive.

Anyway, here it is, with an excerpt and link:

Ludovic Mohammed Zahed is braced for controversy, maybe even worse. A gay Muslim and an expert on the Koran, Zahed plans to open Europe's first gay-friendly mosque in Paris at the end of this month. He calls it a place of shelter as well as a place of worship.

"We need to have a safe space for people who do not feel comfortable and at ease in normal mosques," Zahed told ABC News. "There are transgender people who fear aggression, women who do not want to wear head scarf or sit in the back of the mosque. This project gives hope back to many believers in my community."

"Common prayer, practiced in an egalitarian setting and without any form of gender-based discrimination, is one of the pillars supporting the proposed reforms of our progressive representation of Islam," he said.

"This is a day when we stand in solidarity, friendship and dialogue with Israel. Israel's right to exist must be acknowledged, as the only Jewish state in the world and the only liberal secular democracy in the Middle East." Humphreys said.

"Any state that has a right to exist must also have a right to defend itself. There is no country in the world that could tolerate hundreds of rocket attacks launched on its territory, bringing hardship, fear, disruption, injury and death to its people."

"This rally for peace in Israel is also a moment of optimism." Humphreys said. "This first major rally for peace in Israel is a historic moment and a sign that the tide of opinion is turning. There are many signs that Irish society is becoming more balanced and realistic in addressing issues relating to the Middle East. Anti-Semitic attitudes are increasingly being challenged -- and the most insidious form of anti-Semitism is the systematic attempt to impose a standard to judge Israel which is not used to judge any other country. Many Irish champions of human rights are surprisingly silent about the brutal outrages perpetrated by the terrorist Hamas regime against women, gay people, or political opponents, and about many vicious attacks on human rights in some of Israel's near neighbours. This double standard is now being challenged, which I find very encouraging."

"The inherent fascism of the attempt to impose a cultural boycott on Israel is also being named and exposed. As a Labour Party councillor I especially welcome the presence of the Tánaiste and Labour Party Leader Eamon Gilmore at the Israel Film Days, organised by the Embassy of Israel, in November 2011."

"It is hard to talk about solidarity with Israel without also acknowledging the enormously positive contribution that the Jewish people have made to society, not just in Israel but in Ireland and across the world. On a personal note I come to this issue with an enormous sense of gratitude for the opportunity I had to work for Ireland's first Jewish cabinet Minister, the Labour Party's Mervyn Taylor. I am also profoundly grateful for the insights that so many Jewish writers and thinkers have shared with the world. Intellectuals of Jewish heritage such as Jacob Bronowski, Viktor Frankl, Irvin Yalom, Carl Sagan, Alain de Botton and many others are among the most inspiring figures of modern civilization."

"As well as solidarity and optimism, I think it is also important to emphasise the need for compassion." Humphreys said. "Each death or injury of an innocent civilian in Gaza is a tragedy which must primarily be lain at the door of Hamas, but which also calls for restraint and for the path of peace. It is essential to recognise that there is a Palestinian perspective and there is Palestinian suffering. Many Arab commentators have taken the lead in pointing out that a great deal of that suffering is self-inflicted but it is real nonetheless. A lasting peace must be founded on dialogue between enemies and on a historic effort to accommodate both sets of identities."

"I congratulate Naomi Gibson and the others involved in organising this event and I hope it is another milestone on the road to a more balanced view of Israel in our society."